- Messages
- 3,479
- Likes
- 10,753
Nebraska visits Champaign next weekend. Maybe Scott Frost makes the trip, too. But before the Cornhuskers take on the Illini at Memorial Stadium, Sports Editor Matt Daniels dives into how the once-proud program has fallen on hard times.
NCAA WOES
A report from Brett McMurphy of Action Network shook up the college football world on Wednesday: the Nebraska football program is under NCAA investigation. The reasons? Allegedly allowing analysts and consultants to work with the Cornhuskers during practices, a no-no with coach Scott Frost and his 10 assistant coaches only allowed to do that. Another red flag: unauthorized strength and conditioning workouts last year after the NCAA prohibited such activities because of the pandemic. New Nebraska athletic director Turd Alberts acknowledged the current NCAA investigation, but didn’t say much else. Neither did Frost in a terse five-minute media availability on Wednesday, but the Nebraska coach said this wouldn’t distract his team. “Our players have been laser-focused on Illinois,” he said. “They’re still laser-focused on Illinois. Nothing is gong to change that.”
BIG TEN WOES
The 2021 season marks the 10th for Nebraska in the Big Ten. Since the Cornhuskers bolted the Big 12 a decade ago, though, to become the 12th team in the Big Ten, it hasn’t produced sparkling results on the field the way Jim Delany envisioned when the former Big Ten Commissioner extended the conference’s reach out west. Far from it, with the Cornhuskers producing a pedestrian 38-36 record in Big Ten games. Since winning the Legends Division (remember that awful idea?) in 2012, but promplty getting spanked by Bret Bielema’s Wisconsin team 70-31 in Nebraska’s only Big Ten championship game appearance, the Cornhuskers have produced five losing records in league play. The streak is at four seasons and counting, too, with the Cornhuskers falling well down the pecking order in the Big Ten. With no signs of the troubling trend slowing down.
COACHING WOES
Sorry, Nebraska fans. Tom Osborne couldn’t coach forever after retiring with a 255-49-3 career record in 1997. The program stayed near the top with long-time Osborne assistant Frank Solich taking control. But firing Solich in 2003 after he compiled a 58-19 record in six seasons and led the Cornhuskers to the 2001 Rose Bowl (the national title game that season during the BCS era) still looks foolish almost two decades later. The four-year Bill Callahan era was a disaster. Bo Pelini won way more than he lost (66-27 in seven seasons), but he became a polarizing figure around the state. Nice guy Mike Riley only went 19-19 in three seasons before then-AD Bill Moos decided to cast his lot with Frost. It made sense given his ties to Nebraska and his meteoric rise at UCF. Now, with a 12-20 record and an ongoing NCAA investigation, the heat is turning up on Frost.
NATIONAL WOES
The Cornhuskers are still a hot ticket in Lincoln, with an NCAA-record sellout streak of 375 consecutive games. But getting those numbers to fill the 90,000-seat Memorial Stadium in Lincoln have been helped out recently by boosters and local businesses buying remaining tickets a day or two before home games. Nebraska volleyball, with its nine straight Elite Eight appearances and three national titles this century, is arguably the more successful sports team in Lincoln when the leaves change colors and the temperatures start to dip. Once a perennial powerhouse, Nebraska football has spent exactly two weeks ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll since the 2016 season ended. That’s a stark contrast from the dominant two-decade run the Cornhuskers had, appearing in 348 consecutive polls from the fifth week of the 1981 season until the sixth week of the 2002 season.
NCAA WOES
A report from Brett McMurphy of Action Network shook up the college football world on Wednesday: the Nebraska football program is under NCAA investigation. The reasons? Allegedly allowing analysts and consultants to work with the Cornhuskers during practices, a no-no with coach Scott Frost and his 10 assistant coaches only allowed to do that. Another red flag: unauthorized strength and conditioning workouts last year after the NCAA prohibited such activities because of the pandemic. New Nebraska athletic director Turd Alberts acknowledged the current NCAA investigation, but didn’t say much else. Neither did Frost in a terse five-minute media availability on Wednesday, but the Nebraska coach said this wouldn’t distract his team. “Our players have been laser-focused on Illinois,” he said. “They’re still laser-focused on Illinois. Nothing is gong to change that.”
BIG TEN WOES
The 2021 season marks the 10th for Nebraska in the Big Ten. Since the Cornhuskers bolted the Big 12 a decade ago, though, to become the 12th team in the Big Ten, it hasn’t produced sparkling results on the field the way Jim Delany envisioned when the former Big Ten Commissioner extended the conference’s reach out west. Far from it, with the Cornhuskers producing a pedestrian 38-36 record in Big Ten games. Since winning the Legends Division (remember that awful idea?) in 2012, but promplty getting spanked by Bret Bielema’s Wisconsin team 70-31 in Nebraska’s only Big Ten championship game appearance, the Cornhuskers have produced five losing records in league play. The streak is at four seasons and counting, too, with the Cornhuskers falling well down the pecking order in the Big Ten. With no signs of the troubling trend slowing down.
COACHING WOES
Sorry, Nebraska fans. Tom Osborne couldn’t coach forever after retiring with a 255-49-3 career record in 1997. The program stayed near the top with long-time Osborne assistant Frank Solich taking control. But firing Solich in 2003 after he compiled a 58-19 record in six seasons and led the Cornhuskers to the 2001 Rose Bowl (the national title game that season during the BCS era) still looks foolish almost two decades later. The four-year Bill Callahan era was a disaster. Bo Pelini won way more than he lost (66-27 in seven seasons), but he became a polarizing figure around the state. Nice guy Mike Riley only went 19-19 in three seasons before then-AD Bill Moos decided to cast his lot with Frost. It made sense given his ties to Nebraska and his meteoric rise at UCF. Now, with a 12-20 record and an ongoing NCAA investigation, the heat is turning up on Frost.
NATIONAL WOES
The Cornhuskers are still a hot ticket in Lincoln, with an NCAA-record sellout streak of 375 consecutive games. But getting those numbers to fill the 90,000-seat Memorial Stadium in Lincoln have been helped out recently by boosters and local businesses buying remaining tickets a day or two before home games. Nebraska volleyball, with its nine straight Elite Eight appearances and three national titles this century, is arguably the more successful sports team in Lincoln when the leaves change colors and the temperatures start to dip. Once a perennial powerhouse, Nebraska football has spent exactly two weeks ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll since the 2016 season ended. That’s a stark contrast from the dominant two-decade run the Cornhuskers had, appearing in 348 consecutive polls from the fifth week of the 1981 season until the sixth week of the 2002 season.
